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An Explanation of Life

I came across this interesting and amusing summary of life.

On the first day, The Creator created the dog and said:
‘Sit all day by the door of your house and bark at anyone who comes in or walks past. For this, I will give you a life span of twenty years.’

The dog said: ‘That’s a long time to be barking. How about only ten years and I’ll give you back the other ten?’

So The Creator agreed.

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This is alight hearted view of what could happen in the future to Christmas and the Spirit of Christmas

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The Purpose of Life, Part 2: Obstacles to Fulfilment

The jigsaw puzzle of modern life is complex, and the discussion group in Cambridge included people of a number of different cultures and nationalities.  In view of this, it might be expected that there would be quite a diverse and lengthy list of potential ‘external’ obstacles to achievement of our purpose.

Factors such as lack of financial resources were mentioned, as were societal and family pressures, and these can certainly be important in affecting our actions.

But the greatest discussion was about things much closer to home: Ourselves.

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The Purpose of Life, Part 1:  The Fundamental Question

At the Raja Yoga workshop I attended a few weeks ago in Cambridge, one of the activities for the two small discussion groups was to consider the following questions:

i) What is the purpose of life?
ii) What are the obstacles which get in the way (or might do so)?
iii) What are possible solutions which may allow these obstacles to be overcome?

These are big questions, and perhaps there are no easy answers. I’ll be writing about the obstacles and possible solutions in later posts to this blog, but for now I’ll just address the first question: What is the purpose of Life?

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Personality

Personality like many things in life is sort of concrete and can be difficult to define at times. The basic definition is the relatively stable characteristics that are enduring and distinctive which means it separates people from the crowd.

Psychologists that study personalities try to analyze why people act differently to different situations such as why one person acts shy when they first meet a stranger or while some people are just natural and funny and be themselves. Some scientists believe that this is genetically engraved and that people don’t have much control over this. Other psychologists believe that it’s the environment has a significant say in the way people act. The truth is that personality is a multi dimensional topic and requires pieces from various theories because everyone is unique – thankfully.

One theory called the psychodynamic perspective was discovered by Sigmund Freud. This theory basically states that personality merely exists on the surface and to find someone true personality you have to dig deep in mind. Psychologists who support this approach believe that personality is an unconscious process, or that the individuals are not aware that they conceited or confident.

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The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle

I read this book quite a while ago following its elevation to the NY Times Bestseller list and a huge amount of publicity.

My recollection is that there is one main theme: that being wrapped up in memories or worrying about the future denies us full appreciation and enjoyment of what we really have, which is whatever is happening Now.

That seems like a reasonable proposition, but does ‘Now’ really exist at all? When is Now – this minute, this second, this millisecond? We say that time passes, but in fact isn’t it more that we pass through time?

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Law of Attraction Working

This real life experience has come us from Australia. The story goes that a dentist, Veronica Roller was driving home around midnight recently in her silver BMW 330. She was listening to the audio book of “The Secret” and sending her wishes out to the Universe. Suddenly she was shunted in the rear by another car. She had been rear-ended.

As she got out of her $100,000 pride and joy she was faced with three hoodlums wielding baseball bats. The hoodlums explained in very simple and expressive language that they wanted her car and they could not be bothered with the more usual methods of buying a car they had visualized, her BMW, and they wanted it now. They were following the mantra set out in the Law of Attraction – ask, believe and receive.

“It was one of the most terrifying things that I have gone through” Veronica is reported to have said. So how does this enlightened positive thinker rationalize the traumatic car-jacking. Veronica then went on to say “Most people think that the car-jacking was bad but God, no. The way it all turned out and the way that it came together was just miraculous”

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